Fly tiers, both amateur and professional, commonly incorporate colored plastic and/or metal beads in their fly tying patterns for the purpose of providing weight, color, flash, and fly body segmentation to improve the attractiveness and realism of their flies to the fish they pursue. Beads have also been used in other types of fishing, such as for example, the use of beads in fishing for halibut or fishing using gear such as a Carolina Rig.
Originally, fly tier's used their fingers to select, manipulate, position, and mount beads on hooks. However, the small size of the bead(s), generally in a range of about 5/64″ to 3/16″, the small size of the hook, generally in a range of size 2 to 24, and the need to position the bead(s) properly in relation to the hook point make it very difficult to apply the bead(s) to the hook without dropping the bead(s) or sticking the hook point in the tier's finger. Moreover, the small size of the beads also means that the tier spends long periods of time beading the hook (which takes time away from the enjoyment of fly tying and fly fishing). Beading becomes increasingly difficult as the size of both the bead and the hook decrease. In fact, mounting the bead(s) to a fishing hook is probably the most difficult step in producing a fishing fly. In addition, beads are commonly shipped loose in small plastic bags making the storage, selection, handling and mounting of the bead on the hook difficult for the tier. Bead(s) generally is/are counter drilled on one side to enable the bead(s) to slip over the hook barb and hook bend but because of the incredibly small size of beads, the need to mount the bead on the non-counter drilled side of the bead first makes the incorporation of beads on to a hook extraordinarily difficult.
The process of tying a fly that incorporates a bead begins with the selection of the hook size and corresponding bead size. In most cases the size of the hook is dictated by the size and type of forage prey the fly is being tied to imitate. For instance a fly calling for a size 16 hook would typically require a 5/64″ to 7/64″ bead (hooks used for tying flies are numbered according to the size of the hook gap and the larger the number the smaller the hook). Once the bead is mounted on the hook is placed in a tying vise and the remaining materials are added to complete the fly.
Thereafter, tiers focused on the storage of the beads creating a number of containers to make finding and selecting a particular bead somewhat easier while still requiring the tier to select, manipulate and mount the bead using their fingers.
A few tiers and/or inventors have developed methods and/or tools for mounting beads on fishing hooks. One method relies on the application of wax to the tier's finger for the purpose of creating an adhesive surface on the tier's finger to enable the tier to more easily pick up a bead. However, this method requires the continuous application of wax to the tier's finger and does nothing to improve the manipulation of the bead to the position required to mount it on the hook or protect the tiers fingers from the point of the hook. In addition, this method requires that the tier clean the wax off the finger before proceeding with rest of the tying steps. A second method relies on the use of a sewing needle or bodkin to pick up the bead and align it with the hook point. However, this method requires the tier to find the correct side of the bead to insert the needle or bodkin into prior to picking up the bead, results in numerous dropped beads as the beads easily slide off the needle or bodkin, and still requires the tier to use their fingers to manipulate the bead over the hook barb and bend resulting in injury to the tier's fingers and dropped beads. A third method, known as the hook dipping method is used with glass or straight-hole metal beads. This method uses a clear plastic container.
Some tiers have resorted to using self-closing tweezers, designed for other uses, to pick up, position and mount a bead to a hook. Some tiers have coated the points of their tweezers with various adhesives to improve the cohesion of the bead to the jaws of the tweezers. These tweezers work best with a plastic plate or bead dispenser since the bead must be exactly positioned prior to picking up the bead so that the hole in the bead is not covered by the jaws of the tweezers. If adhesive is present on the end of the tweezers, sometimes this adhesive may stick with the beads, meaning that beads that have been incorporated into a hook have adhesive on them. In applications where adhesive is not used, beads that are not perfectly centered in the jaws of the tweezers have a tendency to spring out of the tweezers if too much pressure is applied to the handles of the tweezers during the process.
The Jade River Bead Nabber is essentially a self-opening tweezer with small indentations or depressions in the tip of the tweezers that aid in the capture and position of the beads. The Jade River Bead Nabber is equipped with a side locking mechanism that can be activated once a bead has been captured to help ensure the bead is not dropped if finger pressure is decreased.
Although the above devices provide some advantages relative to situations where just the human hand is used, all of the methods and devices heretofore known suffer from a number of disadvantages.
These disadvantages include:
(a) Bead(s) must be in a specific orientation prior to picking up the bead. If they are not in this orientation, the tier must take the time to orient the bead into the proper position leading to slow addition of the beads to hooks.
(b) Many devices are not specifically designed for this use and thus, have drawbacks like squeezing beads, which leads to beads being ejected from the devices, and bead loss.
(c) The devices generally do not lessen the risk of injury to the tier's fingers as the tier must make sure that the bead stays in the same orientation and one hand is constantly occupied with applying the correct pressure to maintain the bead in the correct orientation while the other hand must manipulate the hook point to align it with the hole in the bead.
(d) The devices are only able to hold one bead at a time, which means slower beading.
(e) The devices generally do not work well when the bead size is small as they tend to cover the hole in the bead through which the hook point must pass.
(f) The devices do not combine storage, selection, manipulation, alignment, and mounting.
It is with these limitations of the prior art that the present invention was developed.